Chapter 1: Blood Beneath the Keel

Pain.

Pain beyond words.

Julian felt as though an iron spike had pierced his chest. He was cold and weak, and something precious seemed to be pouring out through the hole. Every nerve writhed under the strain, screaming.

Yet he could not wake. He lay trapped in a long, oppressive dream.

In that dream, there were two versions of him, two utterly different lives.

In the first, he had grown up in an orphanage in modern Singapore. Circumstances hemmed him in, but he dreamed of traveling around the world. He had worked for only a few years, not nearly long enough to save for the journey, when he developed a rare disease: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ALS.

Beginning with his arms, his body had failed him piece by piece. Within a few short years, he could no longer move, speak, swallow, or even breathe on his own. His flesh became a prison for his soul, until at last he died alone, helpless and despairing.

In the other life, he had lost his mother at birth, but he had a stern, loving father and a large, close-knit family.

There was an uncle troubled by intermittent bouts of mental illness, yet wise and kindly most of the time; a beautiful, gentle aunt who treated him as her own son; an older cousin who often took him hunting and taught him swordsmanship, riding, and navigation; a childhood companion with whom he spent his days chasing chickens and dogs instead of doing anything useful.

There were other loving relatives, too, and loyal vassals, dependents, and guardian knights...

Frustratingly, both lives had been blurred from the beginning, as though he were viewing them through thick frosted glass. However hard he tried, Julian could recover none of the details.

He had only a vague sense that some recent catastrophe had dealt him a terrible blow.

A crucial section of the vast “memory palace” that formed his personality had vanished, setting off a chain of collapses. This had exposed the first life, which had always lain beneath it as a foundation. Those memories barely kept the palace standing, but left him utterly confused.

Now he was like a small boat that had lost its [anchor], adrift in a torrent of shattered memories with nowhere to turn. Beyond deeply rooted instincts and common knowledge, even his sense of who he was had begun to blur.

After an unknowable stretch of time, only one image remained clear enough to hold.

A stormy night.

Beneath his feet stood an immense warship, towering like a mountain, with a [blue-dragon figurehead] mounted at its bow.

His father from this life was speaking to him, his face frantic. Julian could see his mouth moving, but heard nothing.

Then cold, dark seawater swallowed everything...

Instinct told him that this might be the key to the catastrophe. But the harder he tried to grasp the memories, the faster they slipped away.

Who am I? What happened that stormy night? Where did the rest of my family go...?

A great splash of icy seawater struck his face.

Julian jolted awake.

He never noticed the almost imperceptible glimmer that flashed through his right eye, blue as the sea, the instant it opened.

Slowly, he raised his head. To his astonishment, he was lying in an awkward heap on the deck of a wooden sailing vessel among a group of equally drenched men. Ropes bound their hands behind their backs and secured their feet.